I'm up on my tl;dr TLJ shit again!
I really dig this look on the film, and he hits a lot of interesting points about how it's portrayed, and
about 20 mins in, he hits on the point of Rey's parentage and disappointment. I think that it's interesting in how I hadn't thought that there's a conflation in the feelings between the answer and the fan perception:
"It's not a disappointing story answer, it's a disappointing character answer. It is intentionally unfulfilling, and that's the point of it. The point of it is that it's not a happy, fulfilling, complicated, rich answer. It's just a little empty, and it's a little sad, but that's the emotion that it's meant to evoke. You go into it and, well, not everything is fulfilling, Some things just are disappointing.
And disappointment is a tricky emotion for movies and video games and television. It's a tricky emotion to play with, because it is a very, very fine line to walk between something that evokes disappointment as a conscious emotion, and something that's just unfulfilling as a story beat. So I think they managed to thread that needle really well."
Post-TFA there was a massive amount of hype and speculation all centered on Rey's parentage. What she learns is ultimately disappointing to her,
because it's meant to be the hardest answer that she could have received, since the middle chapter of a trilogy is all about pushing through a gauntlet of trials just past what the characters believe that they're capable of. For Rey, this is becoming a part of something bigger, trying to find her destiny and where she belongs, only to discover that she doesn't belong already and only belongs because she is actually there as a result of being drawn in to the events (by the Force awakening within her and guiding those actions).
The film is incredibly centered on that emotion and it delivers that as a DEEPLY crushing blow, but what's interesting is that for a lot of people, they felt that same sense of crushing defeat and pointlessness from that answer, but they took it
personally. They looked at Star Wars as needing to be telling stories for them specifically and to do the things that they want, because they have a vested sense of agency with Star Wars itself. Suddenly, the fact that that didn't happen meant that clearly Disney, Kathleen Kennedy, and Rian Johnson had all created a story that was meant to personally disconnect THEM, and that every beat and metaphor in the film was supposed to be a message to the fandom itself. Kylo Ren's line of,
"Let the past die, kill it if you have to" was all about moving on from the Expanded Universe and that detaching themselves from the false fandom was the path that should be taken, because THEY knew what
true Star Wars
should be. But at its core, it's because there's a sense of ownership over Star Wars, and since this emotion is used so rarely, most fans don't really process the difference between
being disappointed by something and
feeling disappointed because of something.
After seeing TLJ, you almost certainly left the theater with a sense of confusion, if not pain and/or disappointment. That was most heavily lensed by how closely you connect to the series, and you consumed that sense of pain and disappointment that the film delivered personally.
Rotten Tomatoes' Critic Vs. Audience score is a good indication, but we felt them in this thread as well.
I feel deflated and with so many mixed feelings. I'm fully in favor of breaking away from the Star Wars recipe but it has to work and there were a lot of parts in this movie where it didn't. Maybe I need to watch it again or let sink in for a few more ours to appreciate it more, I don't know.
@X It also remains that I can't bring myself to write a lengthy opinion piece unfolding WHY I feel sad when thinking back to the experience. I am sad that I am no longer invested in the new trilogy, to the point where I can't feel bothered to present a deeper analysis. I'm just so...sad.
Why? – Because it told its story so well that those emotions left the theater with us.
That's why I really pushed at watching the film a second time, with the mindset of attempting to understand the story rather than experiencing it. This is one of those things where how we react to spoilers helps to show why. First viewings are us experiencing the story from the same perspective as the characters themselves, because we don't come equipped with extra knowledge. Spoilers will irreversibly alter that type of viewing. Repeated or spoiled viewings are us experiencing the story as an audience member. You know the parts, but understanding them in context is what makes that difference. That dynamic is what makes a twist ending give you the urge to rewatch a film, and hunt for clues you didn't know you should be looking for.
If it'd missed the mark of cutting those hopes down, it wouldn't've so brutally stabbed right into the heart of people who code a massive part of their identity AS Star Wars. The feeling of endless potential crumbing to dust in your hands and trying to figure out what the hell is left and why there's any point IS the point. You don't WANT to accept that, because it hurts. The reactions of,
"There're any other million ways to've gotten something that we wanted more, and there are CLEAR paths the filmmakers could've taken, and as a storyteller they should've been obligated to take to provide us with satisfaction and not disappointment." are that feeling, too. That knee-jerk reaction at the story direction itself is misdirected, because it's from the attachment of approaching the film's first viewing with a set of audience expectations of the story like you would have when re-watching a film, but then experiencing the disappointment from the point of view of the characters and jumping into critical dissection of the film from that feeling, without actually having ever experienced it clearly just as an audience member –
only feeling like you had because of what you expected to occur when watching it the first time.
That's also why doing what they did was important, and even more challenging.
Episode IX is the journey back from the brink of hopelessness. With VII & VIII taking place within about a week of one another, it doesn't have the time scale to set up stakes with the gravity of the Prequel or Original trilogies, so it has to play with stakes differently and really double down on the characters' journeys and their personal stakes. As our touch point into the Star Wars universe, those stakes also hurt us a lot, but holding on to that is what gives Episode IX the potential to deliver on what VIII committed to.
Imagine if in RotJ, you learned that Obi-Wan was always telling the truth, and the
"I am your father" line was literally just a bluff by Vader.
That one line robbed Luke of all his righteous journey coming after the Empire for having killed his whole family, and took his role away from being an ace pilot of grew up on a farm, and transformed his path into one of a legacy-driven sword-fighting hero – the film even has Wedge take out the AT-AT as he crashes his Speeder and then has him crash his X-Wing and maroon himself on a swamp world to pull that earlier characterization away from him. Luke's trust in Obi-Wan who set him on that path is shaken, he fails at everything he attempts in trying to be this other person, endangers or loses his friends, and ultimately has everything that defined his character in
A New Hope stripped away from him in order to confront the path of the new identity and motivations that're placed before him. It seemed like he was going to eventually have to dogfight against Vader and test out their piloting skills against one another to focus on the biggest central theme to Luke's entire character, but with that line, the film threw it all away and re-wrote over all the established motivational precedent for Luke's character.
Now think about how deeply that line just being a bluff would've destroyed
everything about the resolution of Luke's journey.
There's no casting down his lightsaber and turning his father by seeing the good in him. There's no struggle and conflict to find the balance between the choices of right and wrong. There's no easy path to just blow up the Death Star, kill the bad guys and save the day. There's no change that Luke experiences that makes him someone who could do what he wasn't capable of before. It's giving up the bigger story to satisfy the immediate wants, based on the initial presentation of what matters to the characters, and what they're capable of. But you can only know that, because you can see the end and look at the story as an audience member. Most people don't even have the opportunity to consume Star Wars without knowing that that reveal is a baked-in part of the journey, so there's almost no context for looking at it that way. The Prequels even get to make Episode III their crushing second act and use the whole original trilogy as a resolution because of that.
The Star Wars thematic arcs are all about accepting that there is pain and weakness in one's self, and embracing your love over the feelings of hatred that causes, in order to achieve a larger victory: Luke accepting that he can't kill his own father and saving him instead. Anakin embracing that neither the paths of the Jedi nor the Sith ever gave him the power to save the ones he cared about, but that he always had that power within him if he'd followed the path to love, rather than the path to finding that power.
So, let's look at Rey's reveal within the stages of grief with Rey's parentage in the film, and the points that it informs, and map that along with the perspective of a first-time audience member:
Denial
• Film: That's the initial shock that Rey experiences in the cave.
• Fans: Just outright disbelief, with the same emotions you'd feel that Vader was lying to Luke, and they're definitely going to reveal that it was all just a ruse in Episode IX. This is the "playing it safe" bet because every other option feels like overcommitting to a path, when knowing that the paths are uncertain.
Anger & Bargaining
Film: Rey confronting Luke in the rain and trying one last time to force him into going to confront Kylo Ren like he should've been doing since she first arrived on the island – otherwise she's going to leave and go do it herself.
Fans: Rey's destiny was how fans engaged with the gap between Episode VII & VIII, and with that being the point of disappointment for her journey, engaging in that kind of discourse carried that sense of hopelessness about how they'd previously engaged with the story in dissecting and speculating. With that avenue not panning out the way they felt that they were owed, there was a retreat back to a "pure" George-Lucas-stuff-only playground where it felt like that empowerment still existed coupled with a rejection of the other environment as disingenuous. That's also followed by constant threats about being able to control the series themselves and using that power to enact the what they feel that they were denied.
Depression
Film: Rey trying to save Ben and that not working out either, and resulting only in even more pain and failure for them both.
Fans: There's no point in the Star Wars saga at all anymore, because everything that started out giving the emotional sense of Star Wars from TFA built up to only give a sense of hopelessness from a series that always made me feel the opposite. All of the fun and optimism has been stripped away from where I was at post-TFA in a way such that there's no way to restore the attachment that I thought I had to it. Everything is inextricably interlinked to this, and the only catharsis possible is looking at what could have been (98% of HISHE videos are pandering to these and the above groups).
Acceptance
Film: Boarding the Falcon without a damn clue on how to proceed, but being confident knowing that they have everything that they need.
Fans: Only knowing that everything that's thematically needed to set up the final chapter of a successful trilogy saga is in place. Looking forward to what's coming next, but being ok about not having a damn clue how that's going to happen. This is resetting expectations as an audience member, so that you can have a first viewing of Episode IX from the point of view of the characters again, and free from the expectations over-attachment to speculation assigns to your viewing experience. Speculation is still enjoyable, but it's also detached from a sense of ownership over the story path that you're speculating about. Loving something and taking power over controlling it so that it never hurts you aren't the same thing (Anakin). Thinking you know it all, coming up with ideas of how things have to be, only to be completely wrong about them and being hurt as a result is ok so long as you learn something from those failures and share that knowledge as well (Luke).
Anyhow, more than a year later this film is still giving me more thoughts about the Star Wars series itself, and also about the social reactions to, and political situations around us, that both help to inform the trajectory of the storytelling of the series. Could still literally talk about this film and the series in general for days on end.
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